And this is why the concerns I had about a Hillary Clinton presidency aren’t that different from the concerns I have about a Donald Trump presidency.

Simply stated, he apparently doesn’t even think there’s a problem that needs to be addressed. Here’s what Trump said in an interview with the Daily Signal.

I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.

Some people have told me not to get too worried about this statement because candidates make so many speeches and give so many interviews that they’re bound to make mistakes and say things they don’t really mean.

I agree that we shouldn’t get too hung up on every slip of the tongue on the campaign trail (notwithstanding this clip, for instance, Obama surely doesn’t think there are 57 states).

But the Trump people actually re-posted the Daily Signal interview on the campaign’s website, which certainly suggests (to use legal terminology) malice and forethought on the issue of entitlements.

First, politicians oftentimes say things they don’t mean (remember Obama’s pledge that people could keep their doctors and their health plans if Obamacare was enacted?).

Second, the plans to fix Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid don’t involve any cuts. Instead, reformers are proposing changes that will slow the growth of outlays.

Third, if Trump is even slightly serious about pushing through his big tax cut, he’ll need to have some plan to restrain overall spending to make his agenda politically viable.

For what it’s worth, I’m particularly hopeful (or not un-hopeful, to be more accurate) that Trump will be willing to address Medicaid reform, ideally as part of an overall proposal to block-grant all means-tested programs.

One reason for my semi-optimism is that the programs is becoming even more of a mess thanks to Obamacare and plenty of governors and state legislators would gladly accept that kind of reform simply to have more control over state budget matters.

And every serious budget person in Washington understands the program must be reformed because of spiraling costs.

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today about out-of-control Medicaid spending.

One immediate problem is ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid, which has seen enrollment at least twice as high as advertised. …Governors claimed not joining would leave “free money” on the table because the feds would pick up 100% of the costs of new beneficiaries. In a new report this week for the Foundation for Government Accountability, Jonathan Ingram and Nicholas Horton tracked down the original enrollment projections by actuaries in 24 states that expanded and have since disclosed at least a year of data on the results. Some 11.5 million people now belong to ObamaCare’s new class of able-bodied enrollees, or 110% higher than the projections. Analysts in California expected only 910,000 people to sign up, but instead 3.84 million have, 322% off the projections. The situation is nearly as dire in New York, where enrollment is 276% higher than expected, and Illinois, which is up 90%. This liberal state triumvirate is particularly notable because they already ran generous welfare states long before ObamaCare.

Of course, the “free money” for states is a fiscal burden for all taxpayers. It’s just that the money from taxpayers gets cycled through Washington before going to state capitals.

But it’s also worth noting that the money soon won’t be “free.”

The state spending share of new Medicaid enrollment will rise to 5% next year and then to 10% by 2020, up from 0% today. The enrollment overruns mean these states will have less to spend than they planned for every other priority, especially the least fortunate.

I suppose this is a good opportunity to recycle my video on Medicaid reform. It was filmed more than five years ago, so some of the numbers are outdated (they’re worse today!). But the policy analysis is still right on point.

Who knows, maybe Trump actually will do the right thing and (in a phrase he took from Reagan) make America great again.

Remember, none of us expected that economic freedom would expand during Bill Clinton’s presidency, so a bit of optimism isn’t totally out-of-bounds.

And if you want to be even more specific, the fastest-growing entitlement program is Medicaid, which was originally supposed to be a very small program to subsidize health care for poor people but has now metastasized into a budget-gobbling fiscal disaster. Arguably, it’s the entitlement program most in need of reform.

So how big is the problem? Enormous if you look at the numbers from the National Association of State Budget Officers.

States increased their spending in fiscal year 2015 by the biggest margin in more than 20 years, but most of the increase was thanks to huge leaps in Medicaid spending under the first full year of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Spending increased last fiscal year, which ended on June 30 for most states, by 7.8 percent, according to new estimates from the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO). It’s the biggest boost since 1992 and was thanks to a 15.1 percent increase in Medicaid spending, much of that paid for via federal Medicaid funds. Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, Nevada and Oregon saw more than 30 percent increases in federal funding because they expanded Medicaid under the ACA. But 2015 was also a year where states were putting up more of their own money again.

Here’s the chart showing which outlay categories grew the fastest.

The article points out that spending is outpacing revenue.

On average, state revenues aren’t keeping pace with spending; NASBO estimates General Fund revenues will increase by just 3.8 percent.

Though the real problem is that spending is expanding faster than the private sector, which is the opposite of what is called for by my Golden Rule.

One of the reasons Medicaid grows so fast is that the program is split between Washington and the states, which both picking up a share of the cost. This may sound reasonable, but it creates a very perverse incentive structure since politicians at both levels can vote to expand the spending burden while only having to provide part of the cost.

The National Center for Policy Analysis explains how this system produces bad decisions.

Medicaid has a horrible financing mechanism: Federal transfers to states are not based on the number of poor people, or any other reasonable calculation. Instead, they depend on the amount of its own taxpayers’ money a state spends. Traditionally, when California spent $1 on Medi-Cal, the federal government kicked in $1. …So, state politicians hike taxes and spending on their own citizens in order to get as much funding as possible from people in other states (via the feds). Hospitals and Medicaid MCOs maximize this by agreeing to a state tax on themselves, which the state uses to ratchet up the federal funding. After multiplication, the money goes right back to these providers. …Stopping this wild spending growth requires fundamental reform to Medicaid’s financing. Congressional Republicans have proposed “block grants,” whereby states would get federal Medicaid transfers based on their population of poor residents, not how much they gouge out of their own people.

But unless that kind of reform happens, the program will continue to grow and become an ever-larger fiscal burden.

Heritage Action has more details on the perverse incentives of the current system.

…the federal government promises to reimburse states for a majority of their Medicaid spending, most of which involves reimbursements to health care providers. Therefore, states collude with health care providers in the following manner: they tell providers that they will tax them (so-called “provider taxes”), bringing in more revenue to the state. The state then promises to filter that money back to those same providers in the form of higher Medicaid reimbursements. States then bill the federal government for this added cost. Because the federal government provides more than 50% of total Medicaid funding, both state governments and Medicaid providers are made better off by the arrangement, while the federal government is stuck footing a larger bill it had no part in creating.

Though I partially disagree with the assertion that the feds are blameless. After all, it was politicians in Washington who created this wretched system, including the reimbursement rules that states manipulate.

The net result of all this is a nightmare for federal taxpayers, but states also are losing out when you consider the long-run consequences. And that’s even true with the Medicaid expansions contained in Obamacare, which supposedly were going to be financed almost entirely by Uncle Sam. The Wall Street Journalreports.

…the Affordable Care Act was designed to essentially bribe states to expand their Medicaid programs: The feds offered to pay 100% of additional costs through 2016, dropping to 90% by 2020. This “free money” prompted 30 states and the District of Columbia to take the deal. Democratic activists have joined with state hospital lobbies to pressure lawmakers in the remaining 20 state capitals to follow.

But free money can be very expensive.

Consider the experience of the states that did expand Medicaid. “At least 14 states have seen new enrollments exceed their original projections, causing at least seven to increase their cost estimates for 2017,” the Associated Press reported in July. The AP says that California expected 800,000 new enrollees after the state’s 2013 Medicaid expansion, but wound up with 2.3 million. Enrollment outstripped estimates in New Mexico by 44%, Oregon by 73%, and Washington state by more than 100%. This has blown holes in state budgets. Illinois once projected that its Medicaid expansion would cost the state $573 million for 2017 through 2020. Yet 200,000 more people have enrolled than were expected, and the state has increased its estimated cost for covering each. The new price tag? About $2 billion… Enrollment overruns in Kentucky forced officials to more than double the anticipated cost of the state’s Medicaid expansion for 2017, the AP reports, to $74 million from $33 million. That figure could rise to $363 million a year by 2021. In Rhode Island, where one-quarter of the state’s population is now on Medicaid, the program consumes roughly 30% of all state spending, the Providence Journal reports. To plug this growing hole, Rhode Island has levied a 3.5% tax on insurance policies sold through the state’s ObamaCare exchange.

Interestingly, Obamacare is causing pro-big government states to dig even deeper fiscal holes.

The National Center for Policy Analysis has some remarkable data on this development.

States that expanded Medicaid tend to have per capita state spending that’s about 17 percent higher than non-expansion states. …In 2004, expansion states had median per capita tax collections (both state and local) of 19 percent more than non-expansion states. By 2012, this gap had widened with expansion states collecting 28 percent more taxes per capita than non-expansion states. Moreover, since 2008 expansion states have moved to increase taxes, while non-expansion states have reduced taxes slightly.

Unsurprisingly, the states that are making government bigger are experiencing slower growth.

In 2001 expansion states had real median income that was nearly 13 percent higher than non-expansion states. However, by 2013 this gap had narrowed to just over 9 percent. Expansion states have historically had slightly lower poverty rates, but the difference was only 1 percentage point by 2012 (12.9 percent vs. 13.9 percent). Non-expansion states, although slightly poorer, have lower unemployment than expansion states (6.7 percent versus 7.2 percent).

Another point worth mentioning is that the program isn’t even a good deal for the poor according to Scott Atlas at the Hoover Institution. Here’s some of what he wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

Americans should be more worried than ever about Medicaid… The cost of the $500 billion program is expected to rise to $890 billion by 2024… Yet more spending doesn’t necessarily mean better care for beneficiaries… The expansion of Medicaid is one of the most misguided parts of ObamaCare… Some 55% of doctors in major metropolitan areas refuse to take new Medicaid patients… Medicaid enrollees who manage to see a doctor typically experience outcomes worse than those under private insurance. That means more in-hospital deaths, more complications from surgery, worse posttreatment survival rates, and longer hospital stays than similar patients with private insurance. A randomized study by the Oregon Health Study Group showed that having Medicaid did not significantly improve patients’ physical health compared with those without insurance.

The proverbial icing on this foul-tasting cake is the way the program enables staggering amounts of fraud and theft.

…one of our favorite political euphemisms is “improper payments.” That’s how Washington airbrushes away the taxpayer money that flows each year to someone who is not eligible, or to the right beneficiary in the wrong amount, or that disappears to fraud or federal accounting ineptitude. Now thanks to ObamaCare, improper payments are soaring. Last week the Health and Human Services Department published an “alert” warning that the improper payment rate for Medicaid in 2016 will likely hit 11.5%. That’s nearly double the 5.8% rate as recently as 2013… The 11.5% for 2016 is likely an underestimate given that HHS’s goal last year was 6.7% and instead scored 9.8%, which amounts to $29.1 billion. The dollar amount of improper payments in Medicaid was bound to rise because ObamaCare vastly opened eligibility. In 2015 enrollment climbed by 13.8% and one of five Americans are now covered by the program. …In recent audits of Medicaid in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and New Jersey, the GAO uncovered 50 dead people who recouped at least $9.6 million in benefits after they died; 47 providers who registered foreign addresses as their location of service in places such as Saudi Arabia; and $448 million bestowed on 199,000 beneficiaries with fake Social Security numbers—12,500 of which had never been issued by the Social Security Administration.

But as bad as all this sounds, it can get worse.

If HHS tries hard enough, maybe the department can match the failure rate for school lunches (15.7%) or the Earned Income Tax Credit (23.8%).

…the criminal — and I do not use the word figuratively — administration of Medicaid by the Obama administration. …improper payments under Medicaid have become so common that they will account this year for almost 12 percent of total Medicaid spending — just shy of $140 billion. …That rate has doubled in only a few years…12 percent in improper payments isn’t an error rate — it’s a malfeasance rate. …If improper and illegal federal payments were an economy of their own, that economy would be bigger than Hungary’s… The Obama administration is not lifting a pinky to do anything about this, even though analysts such as John Hood have — for years — been arguing that it is necessary and possible to reform this mess. As the Wall Street Journal has reported, we don’t even verify that doctors billing Medicaid for services rendered are actually doctors. In many cases, we do not do much to verify that their patients actually, you know, exist. We’ve paid untold billions of dollars to “clinics” that turn out to be little more — or nothing more — than post-office boxes and prepaid cell phones. And as bad as that 12 percent rate is, some policy scholars believe that it is in fact probably worse.

Kevin observes that this system is good for the Poverty Pimps.

…the real problem with the welfare state is not the poor people receiving checks — it’s everybody in the middle, the vast array of government employees, their union allies, contractors, and third parties who earn six-, seven-, eight-, or nine-figure paydays taking their cuts of money we think we’re spending on the poor. This is an enormous criminal conspiracy against the American people and the public fisc.

You might think that fixing this fraud would be an area for bipartisan cooperation.

But the sad reality is that fraud is a feature, not a bug. Politicians like the fact that scam artists in their states and district are stealing healthcare money from taxpayers. After all, recipients of the loot can be registered voters and campaign contributors.

So what’s the best way of fixing this mess?

Will big tax hikes solve the problems? If the problem is that America isn’t enough like France, then the answer is yes.

But if the problem is that government already is too much of a burden and that it would be a good idea to at least slow down the rate at which America becomes France, then the answer is genuine entitlement reform.

Like this:

Based on what’s been happening, those of us who have been warning about the fiscal burden of Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare could rest on our laurels and say “we told you so.” But it’s a Pyrrhic victory because being right means bad news for the country.

Earlier this year, The Hillreported some very sobering news about the ever-growing burden of health entitlements.

Spending on federal healthcare programs outpaced spending on Social Security for the first time in 2015, according to an expansive report from the congressional budget scorekeeper released Monday. The government spent $936 billion last year on health programs including Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies related to the Affordable Care Act, a jump of 13 percent from 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Spending on Social Security, in contrast, totaled $882 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported.

Let’s look at just one example of why the fiscal burden of health entitlements keeps growing so rapidly.

According to new data, the portion of Obamacare that expanded Medicaid is generating a torrent of new spending.

Charles Blahous is a former Trustee for Social Security and Medicare Given his inside-the-belly-of-the-beast familiarity with entitlement programs, what he’s written should be especially alarming.

The implementation of major legislation such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) often results in fiscal outcomes that differ significantly from prior projections. …Recall that the ACA considerably expanded Medicaid eligibility… It turns out that the 2015 per-capita cost of this Medicaid expansion is a whopping 49% higher than projections made just one year before. This disclosure can be found on page 27 of the 2015 Actuarial Report for Medicaid, released this July.

Here’s the chart showing how much higher per-recipient spending will be according to the new numbers.

Blahous goes through a lot of technical information to explain why the previous forecasts were so inaccurate.

But here’s the part that I think is most important to understand. Obamacare created a free lunch for states, at least in the short run. So we shouldn’t be surprised that many states have been seduced into participating and that they’re now spending money like drunken sailors.

Basically states established far higher expenditure requirements for the expansion population than the federal government expected, by positing that beneficiaries would be in need of more health services. Why did this happen? Remember, the ACA established an initial 100% federal matching payment for state Medicaid expansion costs, contrasting with historical federal match rates that averaged 57%. Even when the feds paid 57% of the bill there was a longstanding concern that states were insufficiently accountable for their cost-expanding decisions, with much of that cost being shifted to federal taxpayers. But the ACA’s current 100% match means that states make the decisions about expanding Medicaid while the federal government picks up all the costs. Even after the ACA is fully phased in, the feds will still pay for 90%. Under such arrangements, cost overruns are predictable.

So what’s the obvious conclusion?

Having federal taxpayers pick up between 90-100% of the cost of state Medicaid expansions was one of many questionable policy decisions made in the ACA. It’s also proving to be much more expensive than the federal government expected.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) annual report on Medicaid’s finances contains a stunning update: the average cost of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion enrollees was nearly 50% higher in fiscal year (FY) 2015 than HHS had projected just one year prior. Specifically, HHS found that the ACA’s Medicaid expansion enrollees cost an average of $6,366 in FY 2015—49% higher than the $4,281 amount that the agency projected in last year’s report. The government’s chief financial experts appear not to have anticipated how states would respond to the federal government’s 100% financing of the cost of people made eligible for Medicaid by the ACA. It appears that the enhanced federal funding for the ACA expansion population has led states to set outrageously high capitation rates—the amount government pays insurers—for the ACA Medicaid expansion population.

Blase points out that this goes beyond the traditional failure of bureaucrats to accurately anticipate behavioral changes when politicians give away other people’s money.

There’s also some sleazy maneuvers to funnel money to special interest groups.

…the amounts…suggest that states are inappropriately funneling federal taxpayer money to insurers, hospitals, and other health care interests through the ACA Medicaid expansion. …The health care interest groups within the states, particularly hospitals and insurers, benefit from the higher rates while federal taxpayers are left footing the bill. …Moreover, the elevated federal reimbursement rate removes the incentives for states to make sure that insurers are not overspending on providers since overpayments come at the expense of federal, not state, taxpayers.

And most of the new spending does wind up in the pockets of the interest groups.

Recent evidence that new Medicaid enrollees only receive about 20 to 40 cents of benefit for each dollar of spending on their behalf.

But even the small fraction that goes to consumers doesn’t seem to have much positive impact on their health according to one major new study.

Medicaid expansion in Oregon was not related to significant health improvements.

So what does all this mean?

Obamacare has been a disaster. This column has been a look at how just one provision has backfired on taxpayers.

And just as bureaucrats are grossly incompetent at estimating the revenue impact of changes in tax law, they’re also grossly incompetent at predicting behavioral changes when expanding entitlement programs.

In a triumph of hope over experience, let’s see once again if we can get the boulder to the top of the hill.

James Piereson of the Manhattan Institute has a superb article in Commentary about “The Redistribution Fallacy.” Here are some passages, starting with an observation that American voters are very skeptical about using government coercion to equalize incomes.

Public-opinion polls over the years have consistently shown that voters overwhelmingly reject programs of redistribution in favor of policies designed to promote overall economic growth and job creation. …While voters are worried about inequality, they are far more skeptical of the capacity of governments to do anything about it without making matters worse for everyone. …Leaving aside the morality of redistribution, the progressive case is based upon a significant fallacy. It assumes that the U.S. government is actually capable of redistributing income from the wealthy to the poor. …Whatever one may think of inequality, redistributive fiscal policies are unlikely to do much to reduce it, a point that the voters seem instinctively to understand.

…there are perfectly obvious reasons on both the tax and the spending side as to why redistribution does not succeed in the American system—and probably cannot be made to succeed. …The highest marginal income-tax rate oscillated up and down throughout the 1979–2011 period. It began in 1979 at 70 percent during the Carter presidency. It fell first to 50 and then to 28 percent in the Reagan and Bush years. It rose to 39.6 percent in the 1990s under the Clinton presidency, and went down again to 35 percent from 2003 to 2010. It is now back up to 39.6 percent. The highest rate on capital gains moved within a narrower band, beginning at 28 percent in 1979 and falling as low as 15 percent from 2005 to 2011. The highest rate is currently 23.8 percent. Over this period, regardless of the tax rates, the top 1 percent of the income distribution lost between 1 and 2 percent of the income share after taxes were levied. …At the other end, the poorest quintiles gained almost nothing (about 1 percent on average) in income shares due to cash and in-kind transfers from government. In 2011, for example, the poorest 20 percent of households received 5 percent of (pre-tax) national income, and 6 percent of the after-tax income.

Moreover, it’s laughably inaccurate to claim that the United States doesn’t have a progressive tax system.

Many in the redistribution camp attribute this pattern to a lack of progressivity in the U.S. income-tax system; a higher rate of taxation on the wealthy should solve it, they think. …A 2008 study published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the United States had the most progressive income-tax system among all 24 OECD countries measured in terms of the share of the tax burden paid by the wealthiest households. …The top 20 percent of earners paid 93 percent of the federal income taxes in 2010 even though they claimed 52 percent of before-tax income. Meanwhile, the bottom 40 percent paid zero net income taxes—zero. For all practical purposes, those in the highest brackets already bear the overwhelming burden of federal income tax, while those below the median income have been taken out of the income-tax system altogether.

Indeed, it’s worth noting that the reason that government is much bigger in Europe is not because they tax the rich more, but rather because they have higher burdens on low- and moderate-income taxpayers (largely because of the value-added tax).

Simply stated, there aren’t enough rich people to finance a giant welfare state, particularly when they can easily choose to avoid confiscatory tax levels.

And this explains why honest American leftists occasionally will admit that they’re real goal is higher taxes on the middle class. That’s where the money is.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to Piereson’s article.

He also explains that redistribution doesn’t work on the spending side of the fiscal ledger.

Turning to the spending side of fiscal policy, we encounter a murkier situation because of the sheer number and complexity of federal spending programs. The House of Representatives Budget Committee estimated in 2012 that the federal government spent nearly $800 billion on 92 separate anti-poverty programs that provided cash assistance, medical care, housing assistance, food stamps, and tax credits to the poor and near-poor. …most of the money goes not to poor or near-poor households but to providers of services. The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once tartly described this as “feeding the horses to feed the sparrows.” This country pays exorbitant fees to middle-class and upper-middle-class providers to deliver services to the poor. …This is one reason that five of the seven wealthiest counties in the nation are on the outskirts of Washington D.C. and that the average income for the District of Columbia’s top 5 percent of households exceeds $500,000, the highest among major American cities.

Gee, I’m shocked to learn that big government is a racket that lines the pockets of Washington insiders.

So what’s the bottom line?

The federal government is an effective engine for dispensing patronage, encouraging rent-seeking, and circulating money to important voting blocs and well-connected constituencies. It is not an effective engine for the redistribution of income. …those worried about inequality should abandon the failed cause of redistribution and turn their attention instead to broad-based economic growth as the only practical remedy for the sagging incomes of too many Americans.

Amen.

If you want an example of how statism hurts the less fortunate, look at what’s happened to Venezuela.

Medicaid is the largest means-tested welfare program in the United States. …new research suggests that only 20 to 40 cents of each Medicaid dollar improves recipients’ welfare. …How much does Medicaid increase recipients’ actual welfare? In other words: Does $100 of Medicaid spending increase the dependent’s well-being by $100? More? Less? …recipients’ behavior indicates they only valued their benefits at one-fifth to two-fifths of the money spent is a serious indictment of the program.

So who does benefit from the program’s ever-growing fiscal burden?

Medicaid spending is driven by providers, especially hospitals, which have relentless lobbying operations. …The study group found that 60 percent of Medicaid spending comprises transfers to such providers

But here’s the most amazing conclusion from this new research.

Medicaid enrollment did not improve mortality or any physical health measure.

And while that was discouraging, it gets downright depressing when you look behind the numbers and consider how a growing share of Americans are getting lured into government dependency.

Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute has a very grim analysis on the growth of entitlement dependency in the United States.

The American welfare state today transfers over 14% of the nation’s GDP to the recipients of its many programs, and over a third of the population now accepts “need-based” benefits from the government. This is not the America that Tocqueville encountered.

It wasn’t always this way.

The article looks at the history of the welfare state in America.

In 1961, at the start of the Kennedy Administration, total government entitlement transfers to individual recipients accounted for a little less than 5% of GDP, as opposed to 2.5% of GDP in 1931 just before the New Deal. In 1963 — the year of Kennedy’s assassination — these entitlement transfers accounted for about 6% of total personal income.

But things began to deteriorate under LBJ.

During the 1960s, …President Johnson’s “War on Poverty” (declared in 1964) and his “Great Society” pledge of the same year ushered in a new era for America, in which Washington finally commenced in earnest the construction of a massive welfare state. … Americans could claim, and obtain, an increasing trove of economic benefits from the government simply by dint of being a citizen; they were now incontestablyentitledunder law to some measure of transferred public bounty, thanks to our new “entitlement state.”

And guess what? Once we started rewarding dependency, more and more people decided they were entitled.

Over the half-century between 1963 and 2013, entitlement transfers were the fastest growing source of personal income in America — expanding at twice the rate for real per capita personal income from all other sources, in fact. Relentless, exponential growth of entitlement payments recast the American family budget over the course of just two generations. In 1963, these transfers accounted for less than one out of every 15 dollars of overall personal income; by 2013, they accounted for more than one dollar out of every six. The explosive growth of entitlement outlays, of course, was accompanied by a corresponding surge in the number of Americans who would routinely apply for, and accept, such government benefits.

And how many people have been lured into government dependency? A lot, and mostly because of welfare spending rather than age-related social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

…the government did not actually begin systematically tracking the demographics of America’s “program participation” until a generation ago. Such data as are available, however, depict a sea change over the past 30 years. …By 2012, the most recent year for such figures at this writing, Census Bureau estimates indicated that more than 150 million Americans, or a little more than 49% of the population, lived in households that received at least one entitlement benefit….Between 1983 and 2012, by Census Bureau estimates, the percentage of Americans “participating” in entitlement programs jumped by nearly 20 percentage points….Less than one-fifth of that 20-percentage-point jump can be attributed to increased reliance on these two “old age” programs. Overwhelmingly, the growth in claimants of entitlement benefits has stemmed from an extraordinary rise in “means-tested” entitlements.

Ugh. I’ve previously written that getting something from the government doesn’t automatically turn somebody into a moocher or a deadbeat.

Nonetheless, it can’t be good news that 49 percent of U.S. households are on the receiving end for goodies from Uncle Sam.

Here’s a table from his article that should frighten anyone who thinks work and self-reliance are worthwhile values.

There’s lot of information, so I recommend just focusing on the numbers in parentheses in the first two columns. Those show how dependency is increasing by significant amounts for many programs.

…the rolls of claimants receiving food stamps (a program that was officially rebranded the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in 2008 because of the stigma the phrase had acquired) jumped from 19 million to 51 million. By 2012 almost one American in six lived in a home enrolled in the SNAP program. The ranks of Medicaid, the means-tested national health-care program, increased by over 65 million between 1983 and 2012, and now include over one in four Americans. …Between 1983 and 2012, the number of Americans in households receiving Federal SSI more than sextupled; by 2012, over 20 million people were counted as dependents of the program.

Asking for, and accepting, purportedly need-based government welfare benefits has become a fact of life for a significant and still growing minority of our population: Every decade, a higher proportion of Americans appear to be habituated to the practice. … nearly half of all children under 18 years of age received means-tested benefits (or lived in homes that did). For this rising cohort of young Americans, reliance on public, need-based entitlement programs isalreadythe norm — here and now. It risks belaboring the obvious to observe that today’s real existing American entitlement state, and the habits — including habits of mind — that it engenders, do not coexist easily with the values and principles, or with the traditions, culture, and styles of life, subsumed under the shorthand of “American exceptionalism.”

And the erosion of cultural capital is very difficult to reverse, thanks in large part to the welfare-aided erosion of traditional families and falling levels of work among males.

The corrosive nature of mass dependence on entitlements is evident from the nature of the pathologies so closely associated with its spread. Two of the most pernicious of them are so tightly intertwined as to be inseparable: the breakdown of the pre-existing American family structure and the dramatic decrease in participation in work among working-age men. …the rise of long-term entitlement dependence — with the concomitant “mainstreaming” of inter-generational welfare dependence — self-evidently delivers a heavy blow.

Since this has been an utterly depressing analysis so far, let’s close with a vaguely optimistic look at the future.

While it may not be easy to reverse the erosion of cultural capital, it is simple (at least in theory) to reverse bad policies.

Back during the 2012 presidential campaign, I criticized the view that America was divided between “makers” and “takers.”

But not because I disagreed with the notion that people trapped in government dependency have an unfortunate self-interest in supporting politicians who want a bigger welfare state. Indeed, I’ve explicitly warned that some statist politicians explicitly want to create more dependency to advance their power.

That being said, it’s important to understand the depth of the problem. It’s not accurate, as I’ve written, to assume that people who don’t pay tax are part of the moocher class.

…those people are not necessarily looking for freebies from government. Far from it. Many of them have private sector jobs and believe in self reliance and individual responsibility. Or they’re students, retirees, or others who don’t happen to have enough income to pay taxes, but definitely don’t see themselves as wards of the state.

Moreover, it’s not even accurate to say that households receiving benefits from the government are part of the dependency class.

…the share of households receiving goodies from the government...is approaching 50 percentand it probably is much more correlated with the group of people in the country who see the state as a means of living off their fellow citizens. But even that correlation is likely to be very imprecise since some government beneficiaries – such as Social Security recipients – spent their lives in the private sector and are taking benefits simply because they had no choice but to participate in the system.

If we really want to understand the depth of America’s dependency problem, it’s much better to look at the share of the population that gets money from anti-poverty programs.

The Census Bureau has just released a report looking at the share of the population receiving “means-tested” benefits, which is the term for programs targeting low-income recipients. Here are some of the highlights (or lowlights) from the accompanying release.

Approximately 52.2 million (or 21.3 percent) people in the U.S. participated in major means-tested government assistance programs each month in 2012, according to a U.S. Census Bureaureportreleased today. Participation rates were highest for Medicaid (15.3 percent) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the food stamp program (13.4 percent). The average monthly participation rate in major means-tested programs increased from 18.6 percent in 2009 to 20.9 percent in 2011. …The largest share of participants (43.0 percent) in any of the public assistance programs stayed in the programs between 37 and 48 months.

Perhaps more worrisome are the details on how some segments of the population are more likely to be trapped in government dependency.

In an average month, 39.2 percent of children received some type of means-tested benefit, compared with 16.6 percent of people age 18 to 64 and 12.6 percent of people 65 and older. …At 41.6 percent, blacks were more likely to participate in government assistance programs in an average month. …At 50 percent, people in female-householder families had the highest rates of participation in major means-tested programs.

Though perhaps “trapped” is too strong a word. As you can see from this table, less than 50 percent of recipients appear to be long-term dependents.

Though it appears that the Census Bureau doesn’t count the “earned income credit” in its calculations. That’s an odd omission since it is a means-tested spending program (operated through the tax code). So the problem presumably is worse than what is stated in the report, but I’m assuming that there’s a big overlap between EIC recipients and those already counted by the Census Bureau. which means that the share of households getting money from Uncle Sam is still significantly less than 30 percent.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be worried. Indeed, the welfare state should be radically changed because we care about both taxpayers and poor people.

He lists seven ideas, which I’ve shared below (in very abbreviated form) followed by my two cents.

1) Repeal ObamaCare – If we want to roll back the welfare state, we will never have any better opportunity to start than by repealing ObamaCare—a program that is relatively new, has never been popular, and is in a slow process of imploding.

2) Health Savings Accounts – Scrapping ObamaCare would be a natural opportunity for Republicans to propose their own free-market health-care reforms. The centerpiece of that alternative should be Health Savings Accounts, which make it easier for individuals to save money in tax-free accounts which they can use for medical expenses.

My response: Not my preferred option. HSAs are a big improvement over the current system and presumably would help with the third-party payer problem, but fixing healthcare requires far bigger changes to Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax code’s fringe benefit loophole. And if you make those changes, HSAs wouldn’t really matter.

3) Means-test Social Security – Social Security is already a bad deal for the middle class, since the benefits are already skewed in such a way that they are equivalent to a tiny return, between 1 and 2 percent annually, on what might have been a private investment. By contrast, long-term returns on the stock market are about 7 percent annually. And in order to make Social Security sustainable, it will have to become a much worse deal.

4) Restart economic growth – the United States has slipped into theObama rate of growth, a permanent state of semi-stagnation. We’ve been through market crashes and recessions before, but usually after a year or two of pain, we get a strong burst of growth to make up for it. …This low rate of growth makes the burden of the welfare state greater, because we can no longer grow our way out from under its expenses. …If we’re going to expect people to be more self-reliant, they must also have a sense of economic hope.

5) Re-reform welfare – …the Obama administration has used the recession togut the welfare reformof the 1990s, extending unemployment benefits and loosening work requirements. …the administration has used the state for the opposite purpose: to push people from self-reliance into dependence.

My response: Also hard to argue with this suggestion. It’s very worrisome how leftists are operating behind the scenes to push more dependency.

6) Save the cities – …the centers of economic inequality and racial conflict—the key issues on which Democrats always campaign—are places that are the sole property of Democrats, owned and run by them for about as long as anyone can remember. …If we want less class and racial conflict, if we want more people moving up into the middle class and no longer feeling the need for government support, if we want to compete for the vote in what are now deep centers of political support for the left—then we need to start targeting the cities for basic reforms that will improve the quality of life there and bring back the middle class.

My response: A very accurate description of the problem, but I suspect advocates of limited government won’t gain control of policy in big cities, so it might be better to first focus on rhetorical efforts to explain how statism leads to bad results.

7) Federalism – This is not a foolproof solution, because we’ll still occasionally get local handouts… But the general idea is that we can let New York and California set up more generous welfare states—if they want to pay for them. And they should let the hinterland scale back welfare. Then the states can compete to see whose approach is more successful and how many people vote with their feet for the small government model.

Touré Neblett, co-host of MSNBC’s The Cycle, owes more than $59,000 in taxes, according to public records reviewed by National Review. In September 2013, New York issued a state tax warrant to Neblett and his wife, Rita Nakouzi, for $46,862.68. Six months later, the state issued an additional warrant to the couple for $12,849.87. …MSNBC’s hosts and guests regularly call for higher taxes on the rich, condemning wealthy individuals and corporations who don’t pay their taxes or make use of loopholes. But recent reports, as well as records reviewed by National Review, show that at least four high-profile MSNBC on-air personalities have tax liens or warrants filed against them.

And why is this hypocritical?

Because, as illustrated by this video from Washington Free Beacon, so many of them urge higher taxes on the rest of us and argue that paying taxes is a wonderful experience.

I guess the MSNBC hosts forget to mention that higher taxes are only good for other people, not for themselves.

Now let’s look at another example.

Though I confess I’m merely assuming hypocrisy in this case. It deals with actors, the vast majority of which almost surely would want to impose a higher minimum wage on, say, the fast-food industry.

But, writing for Investor’s Business Daily, Larry Elder points out that these actors in Los Angeles don’t want to be covered by the minimum wage because they understand it means less work for themselves.

In Los Angeles County, the minimum wage is $9 per hour. Theater actors, however, can be paid as little as $7 a performance, and an actor can even work long rehearsal hours with no pay. Three decades ago, L.A. County actors sued their union for an exception to union wages for theaters with 99 seats or fewer seats. Why do these stage actors work for so little? They want to work. By working, they improve their skills, stay sharp and or perhaps have a chance to get spotted by an agent. Some say simply having something to do is better than just sitting around and waiting for a casting agent to call. Actors Equity, the national union, wants to change this. …But then a very Republican thing happened — 66% of the union members voted against a higher minimum wage. Their rationale was simple: A higher minimum wage means fewer plays get performed. Fewer plays mean fewer opportunities for actors and therefore fewer opportunities to gain experience, stay in practice or get discovered. …When it comes to their own lives, these actors understand the law of economics: Artificially raise the cost of a good — in this case the price of an actor in a stage play — and you reduce the demand for actors.

Unfortunately, this episode of economic enlightenment doesn’t have a happy ending.

But the union’s national council ignored this advisory vote and ordered, with some exceptions, a $9 per hour minimum wage.

Mr. Elder also includes a very perceptive quote from a Hollywood celebrity.

Pat Sajak, host of “Wheel of Fortune,” recently offered a different perspective on the minimum wage. “When I had minimum wage jobs,” he tweeted, “my goal was to better myself, not to better the minimum wage.”

Though, to be fair, maybe supporters do understand the harsh impact and simply don’t care.

P.S. I wrote yesterday about the impact of tax reform on the 2016 election, and I included a postscript about a healthcare issue that has resonance with voters.

Well, Philip Klein of the Washington Examinermakes the case for another healthcare issue that he hopes will motivate Republican primary voters to reject Ohio Governor John Kasich.

…not only did Kasich decide to participate in Obamacare’s fiscally destructive expansion of Medicaid, in doing so he also displayed a toxic mix of cronyism, dishonesty and executive overreach. …despite campaigning on opposition to Obamacare, Kasich crumbled under pressure from hospital lobbyists who supported the measure, and endorsed the expansion. When his legislature opposed him, Kasich bypassed lawmakers and imposed the expansion through a separate panel — an example of executive overreach worthy of Obama. Kasich cloaked his cynical move in thelanguage of Christianity, and, just like a liberal demagogue, he portrayed those with principled objections to spending more taxpayer money on a failing program as being heartless. …Republican voters made a terrible miscalculation when they chose so-called compassionate conservative George W. Bush as their nominee, as he went on as president to push the largest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society in the form of the Medicare prescription drug plan. …During this presidential primary season, Republican voters will have much better options than they did last time. They don’t have to settle for another champion of big government. By punishing Kasich for expanding Medicaid, conservative primary voters would be sending the message to state-level Republicans everywhere that if they choose to advance big government healthcare solutions, there will be consequences — and they will have no chance of rising to higher office.